Toronto's most hauntingly beautiful Victorian cemetery, established in 1850. Gothic gates, enormous old trees, and the graves of city founders alongside the poor and forgotten. William Lyon Mackenzie and Samuel Lount are buried here. Utterly peaceful.
Neighbourhood: Cabbagetown · Address: 200 Winchester St, Toronto, ON · Hours: Mon–Sun 8:00 AM – 8:00 PM · Price Range: Free · Editorial status: Not yet verified
Tour Toronto’s most atmospheric cemetery, where Victorian gravestones sprawl under 170-year-old maples and names like Mackenzie and Lount appear alongside paupers’ markers. It’s a peaceful yet uncanny walk through Toronto’s real past.
Unlike Mount Pleasant or St. James, the Necropolis is smaller, more intimate, and unmistakably Gothic, with ornate gates and winding, uneven paths. The layered burials—from city bigwigs to plague victims—give it a depth and melancholy you won’t feel at newer cemeteries here.
Palmerston Library Laneway is one of those Toronto places that doesn’t look like much on a map and feels unforgettable once you’re in it. It runs quietly behind the Victorian houses along Palmerston Boulevard, and the whole appeal is in the small stuff: ivy creeping over garage doors, old brick softened by time, painted wooden fences, the occasional crooked gate, a row of recycling bins that somehow doesn’t ruin the mood. It’s a laneway, yes, but it has that particular west-end calm that makes you slow down without realizing it. What I like about it is how residential it feels without being unfriendly. You’re not there for shops or signs or anything performative. You’re there because Toronto, at its best, sometimes reveals itself in the in-between spaces. In this lane, the backs of houses can be just as beautiful as the fronts. Some garages are covered in vines, some are patched together and charmingly imperfect, and some look like they haven’t changed in decades. The brickwork is especially good around here—that warm old Toronto red that catches light beautifully in late afternoon. It’s great for photography, but not in a flashy, “content” kind of way. More like textures, shadows, little bits of urban life. A bike leaning against a fence. A cat in a window if you’re lucky. Sunlight hitting leaves overhead and throwing patterns across the lane. In winter, it gets stripped down and quiet in a different way, all clean lines and bare branches. Spring brings that first green fuzz of vines and gardens waking up. Summer can feel almost oddly rural for a few minutes, with the sound of birds and leaves and not much else. But autumn really is the time. The colours back there can be ridiculous—gold, rust, deep red—and the old brick seems to glow. Don’t expect it to be empty every second. People do use the laneway: residents pulling in and out of garages, someone taking out compost, a dog walker cutting through, kids occasionally biking past. That’s part of the point. It’s a lived-in place, not an attraction in the formal sense. So be respectful. Keep your voice down, don’t peer into yards, and don’t block driveways while trying to get the perfect photo of a garage door covered in ivy. Locals are protective of it for a reason. If you go, give yourself time to walk the full length of Palmerston Boulevard too. The boulevard is one of the city’s prettiest, with broad medians, mature trees, and some seriously beautiful houses. The contrast is half the fun: elegant fronts on the boulevard, then these intimate, textured backs in the lane. Together they tell you more about old Toronto than a lot of “must-see” spots ever could. It’s open all the time, free, and worth visiting in any season. Not because something dramatic happens there, but because almost nothing does. In a city that can feel loud and rushed, Palmerston Library Laneway offers a few blocks of stillness, and that’s rarer than people admit.
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